Thursday, 08 December 2016

I'd meant to do this yesterday, but yesterday got buy, so today I went to wander through the exhibit hall at the Embedded Systems Conference, which was big enough this year to be at the San Jose convention center.

Well, sort of. It was occupying one side of the exhibit hall; the rest was taken up by something called BIOMEDevice, under the same management, so people were just wandering back and forth, and exhibitors' badge-scanners worked regardless of what show one's badge said one was attending.

Anyway! The ESC side of things was somewhat interesting. I saw some of the regulars (including one who'd sent me some samples after the ARM thing a while back; those are waiting to be evaluated once the prototype hardware for the project comes in, Real Soon Now), and there were some exhibitors I'd never heard of before, including one peddling a module that I really wish I'd known about a few months ago, and which might become relevant again sometime next year.

I gathered a moderate amount of literature, and some minor schwag.

The BIOMEDevice side of things looked... well... a lot like a shinier version of a Design2Part show. Lots of manufacturing / rapid prototyping vendors, with a biomedical theme (some of them I've also seen at D2P, maybe with different signage). Also various other sorts of vendors. And cleanroom-related stuff. I don't do cleanroom, though I would like to have a lab with air filtration that would at least remove cat hairs (the current arrangement doesn't even filter out entire cats).

Total time spent ambling around the expo hall, plus walking the few blocks from and to my car: a bit under 5 hours. Wearing shoes the whole time, because Winter.

Tuesday, 06 December 2016

Sure, the price tag seems high, but for a two-off custom job with lots of bells and whistles? Maybe it's not all that unreasonable.

Know what is unreasonable, though? The eight-freaking-year timetable. Ordering planes now, for delivery in 2024. Really?

Well, if it really takes all that long to include all the custom features, maybe that four-gigabuck price tag isn't out of line at all.

But, if all the high-tech fancies are specified now, and the planes won't be put into service until 2024... won't the tech be kind of outdated by then?

Hope the features are modular, like LCS. Oops! I meant to say, entirely unlike LCS.

And how much gold leaf will Ol' Combover insist on adding? Hey, it makes good EMP shielding, right?

Additional: Am I suggesting that maybe the .gov/.mil procurement system is just a little bitty bit out of whack in this case? Faugh! We all know perfectly well that the procurement system is FUBAR. Maybe a CinC who speaks Business will shake things up a bit?

Not much change of really fixing the system, though: the spending programs (remember, kids: defense spending isn't about defense; it's about spending) have created far too many vested interests.

I’d even concede that the impetus was some kind of societal sabotage to prevent white males from feeling so good about themselves that they start another Nazi party.

This is one of those things that seem to make sense, until you look too closely.

The basic flaw in this scheme (if scheme it was) is that people who feel good about themselves don't start (or join) Nazi parties.

Really.

The Nazi party was for losers (WWI + Great Depression). The KKK was for losers (Late Unpleasantness + Reconstruction).

Happy, successful, confident, upwardly-mobile people have no need of hate groups. They have better things to do with their lives.

But turn some large segment of the population into losers, and targets of contempt? Bad move. Now they're recruitable by extremists.

Additional: One might suspect that the current "social justice" racket is actually intended to transform happy, normal children of prosperous families into the sort of downtrodden losers who join totalitarian mass movements. Because if you were trying to do that, what would you do differently?

A quick drive up the empty freeway brings me to the ancestral residence, where emergency vehicles have presumably come and gone. My father's car is absent from the driveway. I poke my head in the front door and confirm that he's taken his cellphone (else I would have snagged it and taken it along).

Back in the car, and off to the Leland Stanford Junior Memorial Eternal Construction Project And Hospital. Don't even bother trying to figure out where ER guests are supposed to park this week; head for the main pay-per-minute underground garage. Park (on the first level!). Emerge, and wonder how to get to the ER. Look it up on Droid-O-Maps, and get walking directions, which seem rather circuitous - looks like the app doesn't want to route me through buildings. Follow the increasingly confusing directions from my phone; eventually reach a point that seems to be close, but the phone is telling me to go in what appears to be the wrong direction. Flag down a passing guard and ask directions: Aha! 'Tis indeed Just Over Yonder, and the sign is in view.

Find the ER (with a detour in search of a restroom). My father is already there. Mother is awake and talking.

After a while, a doctor shows up and reports that initial test results don't point to a heart attack, and that it was probably Just One Of Those Things, maybe muscles being randomly unhappy. More tests yet to be done, and probably several more hours of observation.

I hang around a little longer, then head for home while traffic is still light. [Checks traffic map now, 0705: that's weird; it's still mostly green. Is everyone taking the day off?] Somehow, I think I'll be needing a nap today.

Probable updates later.

Update: She's been moved to the ER annex, and thence to a regular room. Further tests are scheduled for tomorrow, sometime.

Update 2: As of around 1300 Wednesday, she was in process of being released, apparently with some sort of caution about her diet.

Sunday, 04 December 2016

So I got the SSD for the laptop, and installed it, and did a clean install of Debian 8.6.0 (Jessie)....

EAGLE does seem to be OK. VariCAD installs, and runs, but complains about its desired flavor of OpenGL (or something) not being available - this may have been the case with the previous installation on the laptop, for all I remember.

There's no Vidalia for Jessie. I have it on the workstation, left over from Wheezy. Not available to install on the nice clean laptop. Also, there's no gFTP; ditto.

And why was I looking for my favorite FTP client? Well!

The Xilinx ISE installer (for version 14.7, the last ISE there'll ever be, apparently) doesn't run on the laptop - nor, now, on the workstation. Apparently there are multiple, mysterious incompatibilities, and Xilinx is no longer supporting ISE. The actual installed ISE on the workstation does run, so I'm thinking I should just copy /opt/Xilinx/14.7 over to the laptop and see if that works.

...This is likely to lead to another rant, sooner or later; the ISE replacement, Vivado, will import ISE projects... but the version I have installed (2014.4) only supports the newfangled logic families, not Spartan 3e and Spartan 6, which are the ones I use and need to support. So not really a replacement, then. Maybe I should check out the latest - nope; just looked at the web page, and the supported-device list doesn't include those clunky old Spartan parts. Grrrrr.

Well, maybe I end up having a slightly newer edition of the good old buildenv VM, featuring a down-rev version of Linux and known-stable development tools.

Update: Trying to sftp the ISE installation across using Filezilla resulted in some odd behavior presumably related to the vast number of files... and, eventually, in a corrupted filesystem requiring a reboot and manual fsck.

Next try is doing the same thing with Konqueror. (Maybe there's some command-line approach, too, but wget doesn't seem to understand sftp: URLs, and I haven't bothered looking at other options. Maybe rsync? Some stack of find, cpio, and nc?)

This turns out to be a slow process, and maybe I would have been better off connecting the old drive as an external drive and using good ol' cp -a.

Aaaaaand... It Doesn't Work. Running ise results in a segfault. May need to remove some along-for-the-ride outdated copies of standard libraries or something. Or go the VM route.

Update 2: Also, I'm reminded that Adobe discontinued Acrobat Reader (or whatever it's called) for Linux back at version 9.5.5, in 2010 or something (and it's got some nasty bugs, including a performance leak when it's been used too much, and a tendency to pop up a non-removable, sticky-across-all-virtual-desktops file-name prompt if you hover over a tab too long). At least version 9.5.5 will install from the copy I downloaded long ago. Version 11 for Windows won't install under WINE (the installer fails without explanation). Guess I'll be trying out qpdfview, which is current and native and does (huzzah!) do tabs. Tabs are so much better than windows when you have a dozen datasheets and spec documents open, for days at a time!

Update 3: Oho! If I try to run the 64-bit version of ISE on the workstation, it segfaults too. The menu app entry is set up for 32 bits (bin/lin/ise rather than bin/lin64/ise). The 32-bit version runs fine on the workstation. Have to try that on the laptop, next time I have it turned on. Also, maybe running the 32-bit version of the installer would work...?

Saturday, 03 December 2016

Innaresting. Seems some of the embedded control systems in the Dreamliner can glitch if the plane is left powered up for 22 days.

Hmmm. A signed 32-bit millisecond counter would give 24.85 days. Maybe the "22 days" is allowing for a safety margin?

I'm kinda guessing, here, but it does sound like the Highly Credentialed Firmware Team, with all its QA Processes, didn't consider the 1/1000-scale version of the Year 2038 Problem.

Meanwhile, here in the land of unsupervised hackers... AGROS originally kept track of time in two ways, with the limitations noted: unsigned 32-bit milliseconds, used for short-term matters such as wakeup timers (limit 1193 hours before it wraps), and unsigned 32-bit deciseconds, used for equipment run-time tracking (limit 13.6 years, which exceeds the warranty period on the equipment).

Sometime around 2009, I added unsigned 64-bit microseconds (actually incremented by 1000 every millisecond), which could be used for either relative (since boot) or absolute (since the beginning of the Common Era) time - problems potentially arising if one keeps the equipment running continuously for more than 2009 years, or if one feels an inexplicable need to represent Biblical dates in an embedded system.

If memory serves, the impetus for this was the TCP/IP implementation, which needed millisecond-ish resolution for timestamps but couldn't assume a timespan less than 49 days, and needed to do < and > comparisons, so wraparound would cause chaos.

Apparently it's vitally important that POTUS, or even PEOTUS, never under any circumstances speak directly to, nor explicitly acknowledge the existence of, POTROC. Because, um. Because...

Because the Chinese will totally freak out, man! They're not like us! They're like that weird bug species on ST:TNG, where Captain Picard had to deliver the greeting personally, just so, exactly right, syllable for syllable and tone for tone, or the bugs would go nuts and exterminate our entire species!!!!

You just don't dare put one foot wrong with those inscrutable slant-eyed devils!!!!!!!!

Fortunately, it appears that China's leaders didn't get the memo, and are taking the news with a considerable dose of perspective, unlike the Enlightened White People of North America's coastal regions.

Update: Scott Adams elaborates. "As I have said in this blog before, China’s leadership is both mature and competent. Many of them have engineering degrees. They understand what Trump is doing, and none of it is a path to war because neither side has any interest in war. None. Zero." I.e.: they're not psychotic alien bugs. And maybe neither is The Orange One.

* The Chinese, that is. The EWPs probably are space bugs, or at least those weird mind-controlling aliens you can't recognize without the special glasses.

Thursday, 01 December 2016

It occurs to me that, in the past, I've sometimes installed a brand-new hard drive as part of a software upgrade, and archived the old drive.

It occurs further that SSDs have now gotten cheap enough (and reliable enough) that it probably makes sense to replace the hard drive with an SSD, and do the new software install on the SSD.

The laptop currently has a 600 GB hard drive, which is nowhere near full. Replacing it with, say, a 480 GB SSD would be not-too-expensive, and likely provide a significant improvement in boot time, application launch times, and so on.

So... maybe I should order such a drive, swap it in, test the install process, copy data over from the old drive via USB adapter, and then ponder doing the same on the workstation during the year-end break. Assuming that there is a year-end break....

The workstation, now, currently has a 1 TB drive, and a distressing amount of it is used - but I think quite a bit could be cleaned up. So, maybe a cheap 480 GB drive and aggressive cleanup... or maybe I splurge and get myself a 750 GB SSD for Saturnalia, and only do minimal cleanup.

Anyway, I suppose I'll download a Debian DVD image (trying out jigdo for a change), and ponder which laptop SSD to order, and whence.

Update: 480 GB laptop SSD ordered; should be here tomorrow. Debian DVD image #1 is downloaded; I'm also downloading #2, just because. (There are 13 DVD images, but I don't think it's worth downloading the whole mess, especially since all the packages are available via the Net. The higher-numbered images are supposed to contain the less-popular packages; #1 plus a net connection - or even the tiny netinst mini-CD image! - plus a Net connection would suffice.)

Oh, and the near-terabyte version of this SSD isn't all that pricey, so I might just end up getting one of those for the workstation. We'll see how the laptop upgrade goes.

On reflection, the workstation does have a bad case of configuration rot (aside from the EAGLE thing), so, after... gad, five and a half years?... it really is time for a clean install.

Update 2: The DVD drive on the workstation has developed a stuck drawer (a common failure mode these days, and generally non-repairable, as the mechanism tends to be inaccessible without destructive disassembly). If memory serves, burning DVDs with the Blu-Ray drive doesn't work so good. May have to burn the DVDs on the laptop. Or make a Fry's run. Such is life.

Update 3: While looking for other things, I found a new-in-box, slimline, USB DVD burner. Apparently I'd bought it to replace the one that broke a while back, and never got around to unpacking it. So now that's happily (so far as I can tell) writing the second DVD image, and I should be all ready when the SSD shows up on my doorstep.

...The other things in question being the stuff that used to ride around in the inside pockets of my laptop computer case. I'm reasonably sure I had it along on the Tennessee trip. Er. But was I carrying the laptop in its usual case, or in another case, to which the stuff (various cables, disks, and USB dongles, including the inconvenient-to-lose OrCAD dongle) got transplanted? Hm. Must check the Alternate Luggage.

Update 4: Yup; the Stuff was in the pockets of Joy's carry-on-bag-with-laptop-compartment. All except for the OrCAD dongle, which turned out to be hiding under the mouse in the regular case.

Not that I actually use OrCAD these days, but I might need to dust off an old design or something.

Not that I'm particularly good at it, mind, but I have Opinions on the subject, which seems to be more than most of the chattering classes have.

InstaHoyt linked to this piece, which is reasonably good as such things go. I'll just toss in a few remarks.

Some killed by men defending their honor got hit musicals made about them

About them, or merely named after them? I was under the impression that Hamilton, the musical, has about as much to do with Hamilton, the man, as Moonraker, the movie, has to do with Moonraker, the book, though I may be mistaken.

What’s the point of honor if you don’t hold anyone accountable?

Harumph. It's about holding yourself accountable. Honor is about how you conduct yourself when no one else will ever know.

Though refusing to do business with those whom you know to be dishonorable is of course perfectly legitimate, and probably a good idea.

If we want to bring honor back, we have to start with ourselves. That means acting as if a duel might result from our words and to govern ourselves accordingly.

This doesn't necessarily run the way you'd think. On a couple of occasions during the past summer's trip to Tennessee, I noticed Rough Men being carefully nonconfrontational.

One possible interpretation is that I look like a guy who might be armed. But... that would apply equally in California, no?

My guess is that those Rough Men were themselves armed (in addition to being Rough). So? Thinking back over the decades, my experience is that having a weapon handy creates (for those who aren't born troublemakers) an imperative to stay out of trouble. I presume that someone who's had the carry class will be acutely aware of the implications of going armed, and will be alert for potentially dangerous situations and for opportunities to avoid or defuse them.

So: perhaps being prepared to fight implies being even more prepared to avoid a fight. Si vis pacem, para bellum, anyone?

[Added: My wording is perhaps unclear. I'm agreeing with the quoted statement, but suggesting that the motivation for correct behavior might not be fear of being killed so much as fear of killing. Which is a thing. Really.]

If someone informs you that you have screwed up, talk to them. Find out exactly how you made an error, and then be prepared to make amends for that error.

This, and also: if you notice that you have screwed up in a way that will affect someone else, inform him of the error and of your plan to make things right. Don't wait to be caught.

Bosses and clients (except for the bad ones, and why would you be working for one of those?) appreciate being kept informed. A prompt, moderately detailed report on what went wrong and how you're fixing it is better than a belated rumor of trouble, let alone a full-blown fiasco that could have been avoided if only you'd reported the problem early on.

Tuesday, 29 November 2016

It's the day we make post-Thanksgiving turkey, vegetable, and rice hotdish!

I didn't use cream of mushroom soup. Heresy, I know. I used the remaining gravy (which had mushrooms added)... and then, realizing that there just wasn't enough gravy, rummaged around in the cupboard for a can of chicken gravy, whereof I had one lonely can. Remaining turkey leftovers, a pile of frozen mixed veggies, remaining brown jasmine rice blend; mix well and bake.

There was an unexplained abundance of clam chowder in the cupboard, but that somehow seemed even more inappropriate than chicken gravy.

Anyway: once it's done baking, there'll be hotdish to last me a few days.

Update: Wasn't as much as it looked like; I ate almost half of it for dinner.

Sunday, 27 November 2016

Yes, I finally got around to the dist-upgrade on my workstation, from Debian v7 to v8. Started the process around noon yesterday. After observing the pace of downloading, I interrupted the process and restarted it with -d, so it would continue downloading into the night and then stop, awaiting manual intervention this morning to do the actual installation.

Installation took all freaking morning. Well, actually I don't know how long it was awaiting a response while I was out doing my laundry, but it certainly did take a long time. Probably something to do with the vast number of packages I have installed.

Curiously, kdm didn't come up when I rebooted; I had to do a manual restart of kdm to get the X login screen.

Apart from that... so far, it looks healthy, and I can finally run the current version of Google Chrome.

Except...

As with the laptop, EAGLE seems to have lost the font metrics for the Proportional font. Fixed and Vector are both OK, but xref-style labels using Proportional are of minimum length, with the text protruding from the box. And, in EAGLE v7 (but not v6), rotated text (again, only in Proportional) is seriously mis-rendered.

I need to dig out my notes: didn't I create a clean Debian 8 VM, install EAGLE v7, and have the text come out right? Or was that a test I didn't get around to?

Aside from that, all the indispensable development tools seem to be OK, at least on basic testing.

Update: Yeah, so I install EAGLE 7.6.0 on the Debian 8.1 VM, show it a copy of the schematic that's currently not having its text rendered properly, and it's fine.

Ergo, something to do with History. Foo.

Guess I'll experiment with the laptop first, to see if I can make the historical whatever go bye-bye.

Hmmm... a quick test (launch a session on the workstation as the guest user; start EAGLE; create a schematic; place some Proportional text) reveals that the problem is at the system level, not the user level. Probably means doing a complete friggin' re-install of the OS and all the software, right? Phooey.

Update 2: Thinking it might - possibly - be related to doing the OS upgrade after EAGLE was installed, I did a new install of 7.7.0 on the workstation. Doesn't fix the problem.

Um. If memory serves, a design I'd imported from Olimex didn't have the font-metrics problem when viewed on the laptop. Now, where'd I leave that...? Oho! No font-metrics problem, because it's set for always vector font, that's why. So I guess there's a workaround, though the schematics come out kinda ugly that way.

I wonder if Autodesk (they're the new owners, right?) will give us the long-requested capability of using normal system fonts in the schematic. Though, last time I used AutoCAD, I think it was still using pen-plotter fonts. And we had to keep a flock of geese, to keep the plotter supplied with pens.

Oh, and one other revolting development: somehow, the audio volume keeps getting set to 100% while I'm not watching. Could, for all I know, be one of the cats standing on the "🔈+" button.

Actually, I don't know how crowded the stores may have gotten around here the past two days; I'm just assuming that things got hectic later in the day.

I followed my usual (even when it's not Black Friday / Dark Gray Saturday) pattern of getting out shopping early: post-walkies (a bit after 0900) on Friday, and just after special early opening time (0800) on Saturday.

Friday morning, Smart & Final was quiet (nobody rushing in to snap up clearance-sale turkeys), as was Orchard Supply.

Saturday, I don't think I was actually the first customer to show up at REI, but the minimal staff greatly outnumbered the shoppers. Next up, Trader Joe's: looked about normal for early morning, as one might expect.

Morning traffic both days was very light, at least as compared to the same time on a normal weekday.

Oh, and at REI? I found a possibly-suitable pair of "barefoot"-ish shoes on closeout. Gratuitously ugly, but comfortable and good enough for hiking on muddy mornings, saving the stiff leather New Balance things (which, no, I didn't burn in pro-globalization protest) for looking presentable while doing moderate walking (e.g., trade shows).

Saturday, 26 November 2016

Turns out the white parts of my house were originally light blue. Then yellow.

Yeah, I was dealing with the aftermath of the Downspout of Doom. Still not really finished, but I removed the mangled remains of the straps, scraped away the damaged and peeling paint in the vicinity, and applied primer (which conveniently is a fair match for the overall white paint).

I got to see the strata of paint, all the way back to nineteen-fifty-something.

Later, sometime, I'll need to seal up the hole I made for the hydraulic-mining operation, create new straps of correct dimensions for the little old downspout, install them, apply more primer over the straps, and then re-paint that whole section of wall properly.

While the can of paint is around, bits of the shed need a fresh coat. Mainly the doors.

But, for now, weather conditions are not conducive to further outdoor efforts.

... And anyway having Issues with sweets, I set about constructing a reduced-sugar pumpkin pie.

Take one bargain-basement ready-made crust out of the freezer. Grab one can of Trader Joe's pumpkin (because there's a bunch of it on hand). Look at the pie recipe on the label. Improvise.

Use the full amount of heavy cream, but omit the milk. Use four eggs instead of two. Use maybe a third the specified amount of brown sugar. Be generous with the spices, and add about a teaspoon of minced ginger.

Result: not too sweet; about the normal amount of fat, but extra protein. It came out unexpectedly light and fluffy, and a bit on the bland side. No obvious adverse effects from eating some of it.

So, next time? A bit less cream, and at least double the spices. Definitely use more ginger. And more cloves. And more cinnamon. (But no ghost peppers. That would be the Wrong Kind Of Spicery.)

Actually, next time is probably a reduced-sugar pecan pie. Lotsa pecans, lotsa eggs, a little maple syrup. Serve, re-heated, with bacon in the morning: yum.